


The Werewolf Incident of Bainbridge Island

by Onehelluvapilot



Series: Knights and Hunters [2]
Category: Merlin (TV), Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Crossover, Getting Back Together, Getting Together, Hunters & Hunting, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Injury, M/M, Phone Calls & Telephones, Werewolf Bites, Werewolves, Worry, no beta we die like women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-26 23:52:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15012137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onehelluvapilot/pseuds/Onehelluvapilot
Summary: Dean and Sam help out Lancelot when Gwaine isn't around. A near death experience of sorts makes them both question what they want.





	1. Call to Action

**Author's Note:**

> That was a very shitty summary. I don't know what I'm doing.

“You boys still working that job in Seattle?” Bobby asked instead of a greeting as soon as Dean picked up the phone. Knowing that it would be something important by how the call had started, he set it to speakerphone so Sam in the passenger seat could hear too.

  
“We just finished. Heading south.”

  
“Turn around. Head for Bainbridge Island.”

  
“Why?

  
“Hunter in trouble.”

  
“Anyone we know?”

  
“Lancelot Cabrera.”

  
“Gwaine’s partner, the ex marine?” Sam asked.

  
“They've been hunting separately for awhile now, but yeah.”

  
“Shit,” Dean cussed. “What's the situation?”

  
“He's found himself a whole pack of werewolves up on Bainbridge island and needs backup.”

  
“Okay, we'll be right there as soon as we can,” Dean promised as he pulled one of his classically dangerous U-turn and hit the gas.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Winchesters show up, and it does not get better from there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all, this isn't high quality. Just a fair warning there.

“It's okay, it's okay,” Lancelot soothed, trying to regain his breath and also diffuse the situation. He was pressed up against the hood of his truck, hands on it above his head, with a gun hovering behind his heart with Dean's finger on the trigger. He fought with his own instincts to move, to do something, because if he did anything they considered the least bit threatening, then they would put him down. “I'm in control, I haven't turned.”

The two Winchesters stood behind him, both with silver bullets in their guns. He had thought that things would get better once they arrived, not worse, but then the brothers had spotted the bloody tear in the collar of his flannel shirt where his shoulder met his neck. With his adrenaline still running high from the fight with the werewolves, he had reacted on instinct, to fight back, when the younger brother had pulled his gun on him. There was no way he could have won; he was outnumbered and exhausted. Within a second Dean had him thrown against his own truck with his knees kicked out from under him. The longer the pause lasted,  the more convinced Lancelot became that they weren't going to believe him, that the trigger happy older hunter was going to shoot him. The thought that took over his mind was that at least blood wouldn't show up too badly on Cherry’s red paint. Her hood was cold under his cheek, and he closed his eyes.

“Dean…” the man's younger brother said in a warning tone. A second later the pressure of a hand Lancelot hadn't even noticed resting on his shoulder to hold him down disappeared and he could feel in his bones when the gun was lowered. Not put away, but lowered. It wasn't pointed at him anymore. He breathed in.

“Stand up slow,” the most experienced of the three hunters counseled. Lancelot obeyed, testing his knees before putting his weight on them, and keeping his hands firmly planted against his truck. “You got bit.”

“I got scratched,” Lancelot countered. “Not bit. At least, I'm pretty sure.” It had been in the middle of a fight, which was always too chaotic to be sure of anything, but he was pretty sure. At least he thought he was. “She never got that close to me.”

“Show it here,” Dean ordered. Lancelot reached up, slowly, and pulled his ragged coat and shirt away from the wound.

“It's too ragged to tell,” Sam narrated unhelpfully.

“Well I guess we're taking you in then,” Dean said. “I wish we didn't have to, but better safe than sorry right?”

“Right,” Lancelot agreed with a sigh, holding his hands out for Sam to cuff them. Dean didn't lower his gun until the other hunter was secured with silver handcuffs.

“Okay, let's get somewhere safe before the cops arrive.” Sam helped Lancelot into the back of the Impala before both the brothers got into the front.

“Can one of you get my truck?” Lancelot asked. 

“We can get it later,” the older Winchester dismissed him.

“She's important to me,” he insisted. “Of all people, Dean, you should understand that.”

“We'll come back for her, I promise,” the man replied. And call Lancelot crazy, and maybe he was, but he trusted him. He leaned against the window of Baby and watched the full moon. He dozed off for a little while, and woke up again when they pulled up to a little cabin in the middle of nowhere. Sam firmly but gently pulled him back out of the car and took him inside. His shoulder ached where the bite/scratch was. Werewolves healed immediately, right, so maybe the fact that it hurt meant that he hadn't been changed?

The single room building was simple, and could’ve been a cabin used by a normal hunter but for one notable addition: a metal chair bolted to the floor in the middle of the room. Just for situations like this. Lancelot let Sam tie him down without struggling, and then tend perfunctorily to his neck, dashing it with antiseptic and slapping a bandage on it. Then the two Winchesters sat down in armchairs, to watch from a decent distance. 

“So now we just wait, huh?” Lance asked, trying to keep his voice from shaking.

“Yup,” Dean said. His gun, full of silver bullets, sat on the table next to him, and he twirled a silver knife around in his hands. He seemed… Really calm, even for a hunter, given their situation. Sam was reading some occult book.

“Have you… Have you done stuff like this before?”

“Once or twice,” Sam said, looking away. Clearly he didn’t want to talk about it, but Lance needed to ask, needed to know.

“How… How did those turn out?” Their silence was all he needed to hear. He didn't think he was bitten, but he had been more convinced of that before they started treating him like he had been. Now all he could seem to remember was pain, which could have been imparted by claws or canine teeth. “Okay. You did… you did actually wait until they changed before… Putting them down, right?”

“Of course,” Sam said. “Not even then, necessarily. Not all werewolves lose control. We know another hunter who is a werewolf actually. We won’t do it unless you do something first and it’s the only way stop you.”

“No,” Lancelot said, swallowing the lump it raised in his throat. “No. I got into hunting when my brother in law turned, tried to kill my sister and niece. If there’s even a chance I could hurt them, I want you to put me down.”

“There’s every chance-”

“If that's what you want,” Dean agreed solemnly. “Yes.” He met Lancelot’s eyes without flinching.

“Thank you.”

“Lancelot-” the younger, more idealistic brother tried to cut in and change his mind.

“Sammy, he doesn't want to be a monster. You of all people should understand that.”

Lancelot didn't know what that meant, but it shut the younger man up, and he felt it would be rude to ask, so he didn't say anything. All three of the hunters lapsed into silence. According to the clock on the wall it was only one in the morning. It would be hours yet until the moon set and they'd know for sure whether he had been turned. He watched the clock and waited. Hours upon hours in a truck had made him patient, and very good at dozing off sitting up.  He was woken by his phone ringing. His first thought was surprise that they had service up here, his second was wonder at who in the world could be calling him, and only his third was annoyance when he made to reach for it in his pocket before his hand was jerked to a stop by the ropes holding his arms to the chair.

“Could you get that for me?” he asked either of the other hunters. Sam came over and awkwardly took the phone out of his pocket for him. The name on the caller ID was familiar to both of them, but Sam picked it up before Lancelot could protest.

“Gwaine,” the hunter greeted amicably, with the kind of easy comfort that came from knowing each other from childhood.

“Sam? Why are you….. fuck, am I too late? Where's Lancelot?”

“Oh, sorry, he's right here. Didn't mean to freak you out.”

“Put him on,” Gwaine demanded. He wasn't going to be able to calm down at all until he heard his ex’s voice. Sam held the phone up to the ear of the trussed-up man.

“Hey,”  Lance said, voice catching in his throat.

“Oh thank God you're okay! When Bobby called and said you were in trouble, I didn't know what to do. I've been on the road all night but I'm not going to get there until morning, and I knew by that time all the action would be over. So how'd it go?”

“I managed to kill the pack of them. Dean and Sam showed up and helped.” The older Winchester gave him a look that clearly asked whether he was going to tell him what actually happened. “I think I'm okay.”

“You think?” Gwaine asked. Their connection wasn't good, but even through the static Lancelot could hear that all the stress was back in his voice. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I might've been bit.”

“What?! Might've? How might you have been bit? How don't you know?”

“There's a wound on my neck that might be a scratch or a bite, and I can't remember where it came from,” he said, and immediately started worrying whether amnesia was a symptom of lycanthropism. “Sam and Dean are keeping an eye on me until moonset, just to be safe.”

“You mean they have you tied up,” the hunter on the other side of the phone snarled.

“Yes, but they're just trying to do their jobs thoroughly. If they hadn't done it I would've asked them to.” He decided against telling Gwaine what he had already asked them to do. “Now listen to me. If this doesn't go right, I need you to take care of my sister and Tazzy, okay?”

“That isn't going to happen, because you're going to be fine,” his ex said, but it sounded like he was mostly trying to convince himself.

“Just promise me okay? She’s strong, stronger than me probably, in a different way, but she's been through too much already, and if I don't know that she has someone looking after her, I honestly might get stuck here.” After Death, he meant. Protective spirits weren't common, but they weren't unheard of either, and if anyone would become one, Lancelot was right up there at the top of the list, along with the Winchesters. Gwaine would have been too, if his sister was still around to need protection. He was fierce in general, but when he cared for someone, that stepped up like a thousand paces.

“How about I help you look after them, huh, because you're going to be fine. Is that alright?”

“Yes, thank you. Goodbye Gwaine.” He said it solemnly, fearing that it was the last thing he'd ever say to him even while praying to a god he didn't believe in that it wouldn't be.

“I'll see you later, okay?” the other hunter tried to reassure him before Dean took the phone.

“We're in a small cabin on a dirt road off along Pine Forest highway,” the Winchester told his old friend.

“I'll be there in a few hours, and Dean, we've known each other for a long time man, but I swear that if anything happens to Lancelot, if you  _ do _ anything to him, I will do the same thing to you.”

“We'll wait for you,” Dean replied nonchalantly. It wasn't that he didn't take Gwaine’s threat seriously; he’d known him long enough to know the hunter absolutely meant it and might go so far as to carry it out. He just couldn't make any promises. “I'll see you soon.”

He hung up and set down the phone. The two Winchesters looked politely away from Lancelot as the hunter blinked to clear his eyes of tears unable to move his hands to wipe them away.

“Bobby told me you and Gwaine had broken up,” Dean said after giving him a minute.  Like his friend and and many other hunters who had gotten into it at a young age, he had never learned to mince words. 

“We did, but in this line of work people you care about and who care about you are too valuable to let go,” Lancelot gave the standard answer. He went back to staring at the clock and out the dark window until it started to glow a little lighter.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwaine shows up.

Gwaine managed to restrain himself enough to open the door calmly instead of busting it down with the logic that it was dawn and anything that was going to happen would have happened already. Lancelot, tied to a chair in the middle of the room, looked up when he came in. He looked like shit, with his hair a tangled mess, his clothes covered in blood, and just utter exhaustion on his face. He still managed to wrangle up a tiny smile for Gwaine though.

“Oh thank God you're okay,” he sighed.

“We were just about to untie him, given how the moon's gone down,” Dean said. Gwaine didn't need any more encouragement than that to go take the bonds off his ex. Once Lance had an arm free, he started to undo the ropes himself.

“Thanks,” he breathed softly.

“No problem,” Gwaine replied. Lancelot needed a hand getting to his feet, but once he was up, he waved away the help as he made his way to the little table in the cabin to lean on.

“I'm alright,” he insisted as he rubbed at chafed wrists. “Dean, could I borrow some clean clothes?”

“Of course. I'll go grab them,” he agreed. He grabbed Gwaine’s arm and dragged him outside too as he went. Sam stayed inside with the injured hunter. His ex boyfriend started heading towards his own shitty truck. “Hold up man, I didn't drag you out here to let you just walk away.”

“Then why did you?”

“To try to give you some advice. Lancelot needs you, now more than ever. And he wants you too. And you, you drove however many miles in however many hours to get to him. So you clearly want him.”

“Maybe,” Gwaine admitted. “So what?”

“So what? So, love in this life is precious. You two finding each other was incredibly lucky. Don't throw that luck away.”

“I seem to remember you not being so approving of my tastes before.”

“And I was an idiot before. It shouldn't matter who you love, as long as they love you back. And Lancelot seems to, so go give him this and get him back.” He passed over a relatively clean flannel.

“Thanks,” Gwaine said. “For being there for him when I wasn't.” He went inside to hand over the shirt.

“Huh. I thought you might still have had one of my shirts hanging around,” Lancelot said to Gwaine. He was having trouble moving his right arm too much, and not just because of the confining bandages. He may not have been bitten, but the damage done to his shoulder was nothing to be scoffed at. With a sigh, he let his ex help him with the shirt and buttons.

“So, I noticed Cherry isn't outside. Can I give you a ride back to her?”

“Yeah, sure,” he agreed. He didn't sound particularly enthralled by the idea. Gwaine opened the door of his own shitty truck, which had an extremely difficult handle, for the injured hunter. 

“I'm glad you're… uh,  not a werewolf,” Sam said awkwardly through the permanently stuck open window of the shitty truck. Dean rolled his eyes at his brother.

“Yeah, me too,” Lancelot agreed,  rubbing the back of his neck with his good arm. “Thank you, for the help.”

“Feel free to call anytime you need it,” Sam offered graciously.

“Same here.”

“Oh my god enough with the pleasantries,” Gwaine whined. Dean looked inclined to agree with him. “Trust a couple of hunters to only be polite when it's annoying.” He still wasn't quite alright with the Winchesters having tied up Lancelot, though he knew logically that it was actually a fairly conservative way to handle a suspected werewolf.

“See ya later, you sonuvabitch,” Dean said to his teenage years best friend with a wave as the nearly broken down truck pulled away.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwaine and Lancelot talk.

The two men drove in silence for awhile. An oppressive, awkward silence that Gwaine would have broken if he'd been able to find the words, instead of one of the comfortable quiet periods when no one felt the need to say anything that they used to have when they travelled together. Sometimes they listened to music through Cherry's CD player: Lancelot’s blues or Gwaine’s hard rock. Sometimes the passenger read, or read aloud. But usually when they drove they just sat silently. The road was sacredly quiet. They'd talk at night, in a sleazy hotel room, or a tent in a campground somewhere, or in the back of the truck pulled off to the side of the highway. They slept there when they didn't have enough money for the other two options. When it was cold or rainy they would sleep in the cab, either sitting up or taking turns lying down across the bench seat.  In the summer and when they found themselves in a warm part of the country, they’d sleep out in the back of the truck, under the stars. Those were the best nights, because even though the truck bed was hard and uncomfortable, the men weren't.

They'd barely spoken in the past year, never mind seen each other. When they had, it had been at a hunter funeral, surrounded by other people, and Gwaine was already so hammered by the Wendigo drinking game that all his inhibitions (such as they were) had flown right out the window. He'd flirted, and after waking up in bed, fully clothed, mind you, with Lancelot beside him, he'd snuck out without saying goodbye. Before tonight, that was the last time they'd even spoken.

“So, aside from this case, how's life been treating you?” Gwaine finally asked.

“Not so great, honestly,” Lancelot sighed. “I'm thinking of getting out.”

“Really? What would you do?”

“I don't know. Jody Mills, you know,  Bobby’s friend, suggested that I become a police officer. It would be a lot safer, and I could stick closer to my sister and Tazzy.”

“That'd be nice, I imagine.”

“I'd also have a partner again,” he said meaningfully.

“Are you still pissed about that?” Gwaine asked.

“Yes I'm still pissed!” Lancelot shouted. He rarely raised his voice. “ I wouldn't have been in this fucking situation tonight if you hadn't left me completely without backup. Do you know how much experience I had when you left? Sixteen fucking months. I'd worked on fewer than fifty cases. I had no idea what I was doing, and so on the first ten cases I worked by myself, I ended up in the hospital seven times. I relied on you to teach me, and… and to just  _ be there _ , and you let me down.”

“Was that all I was to you? Backup?”

“Of course not, you asshole. But because you were my partner in more than one sense of the word, it hurt in more than one way when you left. You broke my heart and then a werewolf nearly ate it.”

There was a long pause.

“Gwaine, you drove what, three hundred miles last night to get to me?” Lancelot asked. Bobby had told him when he'd called to ask for help that his ex was tracking a Wendigo in Montana. “So clearly you still care. I still can't get my head around why you left in the first place, but if you're willing to try it, I want you back.”

“Are you actually quoting Michael Jackson at me?” Gwaine asked.

“I know humor is your defense mechanism, but could you be serious for just a minute please? Yes or no?”

“Yes. A million times yes. I'm sorry. I was an idiot for leaving in the first place, and I'm not going to make that mistake again.”

“Good,” Lancelot said with a contented sigh. “Do you want to drive when we get back to Cherry? I'm worn out.”

“As much as I like the thought of being back in an actually non-junker of a truck, I've been on the road all night. There’s a non-haunted campground on the mainland not too far from here that I get free spots at, as it's because of me that an angry ghost raccoon isn't rummaging through their trash anymore.”

“How many businesses give you free stuff because you rescued their owners from some kind of supernatural terror?”

“Uh, lemme count. I think I'm up to seven restaurants, twenty two hotels, three campsites, and one auto shop in Illinois. Plus a lot of grateful people that let me stay at their houses when I'm passing through. Oh, and a brewery in Oregon that got taken over by a Japanese alcohol spirit. We could head down there tomorrow. They make great IPAs.”

“So I guess you still know what I like,” Lancelot said. It wasn't even that suggestive, but from his normally clean mouth and when he bit his lip like that it sounded positively obscene. If Gwaine had been a man prone to blushing, he would've turned bright red. 

“Okay. We'll definitely go there then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooooof. That was shit. Thanks for reading it I guess? This has been rotting in my drive for so long. The ending (and the middle, and the beginning) is shit, but I don't have enough energy to come up with something better. Sorry.

**Author's Note:**

> Love comments about my shitty writing.


End file.
